List of Maps  vii

List of Illustrations  ix

Preface  xi

Acknowledgments  xxvii

Abbreviations  xxxi

Introduction. Spatial Politics in the Precarious City  1

Part I  23

Making Space: City Building and the Production of the Built Enivronment  

1. The Restless Urban Landscape: The Evolving Spatial Geography of Johannesburg  29

2. The Flawed Promise of the High-Modernist City: City Building at the Apex of Apartheid Rule  59

Part II  83

Unraveling Space: Centrifugal Urbanism and the Convulsive City  

3. Hollowing out the Center: Johannesburg Turned Inside Out  87

4. Worlds Apart: The Johannesburg Inner City and the Making of the Outcast Ghetto  137

5. The Splintering Metropolis: Laissez-faire Urbanism and Unfettered Suburban Sprawl  173

Part III  205

Fortifying Space: Siege Architecture and Anxious Urbanism  

6. Defensive Urbanism after Apartheid: Spatial Partitioning and the New Fortification Aesthetic  213

7. Entrepreneurial Urbanism and the Private City  245

8. Reconciling Arcadia and Utopia: Gated Residential Estates at the Metropolitan Edge  283

Epilogue. Putting Johannesburg in Its Place: The Ordinary City  321

Appendix  333

Notes  337

Bibliography  423

Index  463

Finalist, 2012 Herskovits Award (presented by the African Studies Association)

“[T]his is a book that should be read with attentiveness. It traces the lines of a city in which profound daily violence and suffering coexist with theatrical excess. It shows in convincing breadth that although the living conditions of suburban enclaves and those who dwell in abandoned buildings of the inner city may be ‘worlds apart,’ they are also closely connected to one another, and part of the same historical and economic processes.”—Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Mail and Guardian

“The political, economic, and social tensions that have accompanied the city’s everchanging urban landscape are on display in this well-researched and penetrating work. . . . City of Extremes is a significant and helpful
resource for the study of cities in an era of globalization and urbanization.”—Travis Vaughn, International Bulletin of Missionary Research

“[Murray’s] book is a careful and particular view of the make-up of these emblematic [Johannesburg] terrains, revealed through Murray’s productive combinations of architecture, the scales of market forces, property values and square footage.” —Suzanne M. Hall, Antipode

“Murray is a keen observer of postapartheid Johannesburg. . . .”—Dominic Thomas, Research in African Literatures

“Martin Murray provides a robust account of Johannesburg’s development over the course of about a century, and proves a skilled guide through what is a complex and sometimes dizzying history of city building, social conflict and urban security…Of the many contributions Murray’s book makes, perhaps the most important is that it unsettles many prevailing approaches to how we think about urban futures, in both the global South and North.”—Tony Roshan Samara, Urban Studies

Finalist, 2012 Herskovits Award (presented by the African Studies Association)

“[T]his is a book that should be read with attentiveness. It traces the lines of a city in which profound daily violence and suffering coexist with theatrical excess. It shows in convincing breadth that although the living conditions of suburban enclaves and those who dwell in abandoned buildings of the inner city may be ‘worlds apart,’ they are also closely connected to one another, and part of the same historical and economic processes.”—Matthew Wilhelm-Solomon, Mail and Guardian

“The political, economic, and social tensions that have accompanied the city’s everchanging urban landscape are on display in this well-researched and penetrating work. . . . City of Extremes is a significant and helpful
resource for the study of cities in an era of globalization and urbanization.”—Travis Vaughn, International Bulletin of Missionary Research

“[Murray’s] book is a careful and particular view of the make-up of these emblematic [Johannesburg] terrains, revealed through Murray’s productive combinations of architecture, the scales of market forces, property values and square footage.” —Suzanne M. Hall, Antipode

“Murray is a keen observer of postapartheid Johannesburg. . . .”—Dominic Thomas, Research in African Literatures

“Martin Murray provides a robust account of Johannesburg’s development over the course of about a century, and proves a skilled guide through what is a complex and sometimes dizzying history of city building, social conflict and urban security…Of the many contributions Murray’s book makes, perhaps the most important is that it unsettles many prevailing approaches to how we think about urban futures, in both the global South and North.”—Tony Roshan Samara, Urban Studies

“In this meticulously researched account of Johannesburg’s socio-spatial history, Martin J. Murray gets beneath the surface of the city’s chaotic present to discover the inertia of long-term deployments. He finds that ingrained habits of urban planning and real estate entrepreneurship have always been mobilized in the city as twin mechanisms of change and renewal across moments of territorial mutation. This exposes post-apartheid transformation as a rearticulation of old orders and habits and makes an important contribution to revising the idea of a decisive historical rupture at the end of apartheid.”—Lindsay Bremner, Professor of Architecture, Tyler School of Art, Temple University

“Martin J. Murray navigates the slippery interfaces where mega-development, social progress, dystopian dread, racial enclaving, and mobilities of all kinds intersect, revealing both the alarming disposition of Africa’s most heterogeneous city and a rough-hewn humanity despite the odds. At each step, Murray is precise and impassioned in this no-holds-barred analysis of the lengths to which politicians, business people, planners, entrepreneurs, and developers will go to hold a city down.”—AbdouMaliq Simone, author of For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities

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